How Maureen Buotte’s work became the foundation of Eagle’s hosted cloud solution and an example for women engineers across the company

Mike Fitzgerald, Chief Information Officer

Over the past few years, issues of diversity in business and technology have taken center stage. Whether it is the #PressforProgress in gender parity that was the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day or the rise of nonprofit groups like Girls Who Code designed to encourage young women’s interest in typically male-dominated STEM industries, there are more efforts than ever before working to increase women’s rights, responsibilities, and roles in the workforce and beyond. Consequently, these efforts are paying off. Study after study has shown that gender-diverse companies are more profitable and deliver better results.

One of Eagle’s longest-serving engineers, Maureen Buotte, understands these challenges. When she started her career two decades ago at ITS Associates (which would later become Eagle ACCESSSM), she was the only female engineer. As one of the only women in her engineering school, she was accustomed to feeling outnumbered. During this time, Maureen quickly realized how important diversity and mentorship would be in the growth and transformation of Eagle’s software and the evolving impact of women in the company—and worked to become instrumental in both. In fact, one of her earliest contributions became a foundational component to Eagle ACCESSSM, Eagle’s secure private cloud. And her efforts to mentor women at Eagle have mirrored and perhaps spurred the progress being made in the industry today.

Prior to the many roles she has held through the years at Eagle in engineering and business solutions, Maureen was a Database Manager who was frustrated with having to repeatedly replicate the same processes. She began working to develop an automated discovery method that would regularly scan active databases and deliver routine maintenance reports to identify any irregularities or other issues necessitating additional action. Known as Big Brother, this automated process database turned out to be a critical element and differentiator for numerous Eagle products. Today, instead of monitoring five databases as it originally did, the tool monitors thousands of client databases. In addition, Maureen led the effort to both design and build an “Automated Database Refresh,” which reduced the DBA resource time from about 7 hours to 15 minutes per refresh. Maureen’s focus on automation was revolutionary at the time. Her contributions paid off during the early days of cloud hosting software. As one of the few software providers offering hosting with a small team of engineers, automation allowed Eagle to grow its client base without needing to add employees in a linear fashion as its competitors did.

Maureen is now the Head of Site Reliability where she leads a team of engineers that help clients navigate a path from conception and development to engineering and support. She heads her team with not just a managerial/oversight perspective, but by actually leading and architecting solutions herself. (She is able to code in almost 30 different languages!) While her early work in automation and cloud engineering has stood the test of time and remained central to Eagle’s current and future offerings, Maureen remains focused on the goal of building agile products that can be easily adapted as technology evolves. Her efforts have helped set the tone for Eagle’s digital transformation as the company moves to further utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence in building next-generation solutions. Recently, she led development of Eagle’s new Client Portal, where clients are able to have continuous digital access to operational support and information.

Over the years, Maureen has engaged with numerous people who are surprised to learn she is an engineer or that she wrote the code supporting the product they are using. When Eagle launched its Women’s Initiative Network, a mentoring organization designed to support the advancement of women within Eagle and externally, Maureen knew that her participation would be crucial to increasing women’s contribution to the organization. She has acted as a mentor to other women at Eagle and frequently participates in STEM events to help educate the next generation of women. She was also chosen to participate in the first class of BNY Mellon’s WIT Sponsorship Program.

As Eagle moves forward with its digital transformation and next phase of cloud-native solutions, engineering is playing a much larger role; teams are now involved from conception to development to support. With the continued contributions of women like Maureen and her counterparts across the organization, Eagle is well-poised to remain relevant as a leader in financial services technology and in advancing diversity in the workplace and women’s impact across the industry.